


The boy who is like the sun

by nwtons



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 03:28:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13802439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwtons/pseuds/nwtons
Summary: “So I thought of you, and you heard me thinking of you… And you felt that you could save me, so you became real and came here?”, a nod, weak as it is due to Shouyou’s face still being pressed into the juncture of his neck and shoulder.





	The boy who is like the sun

_You are my sunshine_

_My only sunshine_

_You make me happy_

_When skies are grey_

It is on a rainy evening after the semester’s final exams that Kageyama Tobio first thinks of him, though more time will have to pass before this becomes apparent. The thought comes unannounced as he sits on the floor in front of his second-hand sofa, scavenged in a dumpster diving trip about two months ago, a muted episode of some anime he’s never cared too much for playing on the TV. He’s been feeling blurry around the edges for a while now, only this time the feeling is intensified due to spending most of his days all alone in the apartment with the cold seeping in from all angles.

 _I wish there were some sunshine in my life_ , he thinks.

And though this thought might possibly be the most random one he’s ever had, it doesn’t seem at all weird that it’s suddenly popped into his head. And so the rain keeps falling, and his TV keeps on buzzing mechanically, a low hum that all appliances seem to make when they’ve reached a certain age, and he keeps on thinking about the sunshine and how cold he’s been for a while now.

…

It is a few days after this that the thought comes to him again, this time at an ungodly time of night, which can technically be considered more morning than night. Kageyama Tobio has never been particularly fond of going to sleep, mostly because he seldom manages to fall asleep within a reasonable amount of time. More often than not, his schedule of going to sleep consists of laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and letting his mind roam freely across thoughts that come and go as they please.

Tonight, in an insomnia-induced thought process, his mind conjures up a vision of a boy. Kageyama is a hundred percent certain that he has never, in fact, seen this boy in real life, and that he must exist solely in his own mind, only for him to see. The boy has orange hair, reminiscent of a sunset, and his eyes are the colour of burning embers at the bottom of a fire pit. He feels a warmth settle somewhere deep within him, spreading slowly but surely to the very tips of his toes.

 _It’s like sunshine on my skin_ , his brain supplies.

…

The boy comes to him almost every day in the form of a singular sentence etched into his mind- _This is a boy who is like the sun_. He makes Kageyama feel warm from the inside out, lulls him to sleep in the tiny hours of the morning when all the world is already plunged deep into their dreams, and appears once again when he’s sound asleep. In the dreams, he only smiles. His smile is the most beautiful thing Kageyama has ever seen.

One morning, he wakes up from one of these dreams, which have been the same every time since they began nearly a month ago, and immediately Kageyama knows that today is different from all the other days before it. He doesn’t know why this is, just that it definitely is, and that he definitely needs to find out why.

He goes over the usual routine of stretching out in bed, then hops out of bed and stretches some more, feeling the satisfying crack of his stiff body and enjoying the feeling of being well-rested for the first time in what feels like forever. Kageyama then walks to the bathroom to wash his face, and nearly slams face-first into the floor when his eyes meet a pair of amber ones in the mirror’s reflection.

On his back, with arms wrapped loosely around his neck, and legs wrapped tightly around his waist, is the boy from his dreams, still wearing his warm smile, looking at Kageyama’s wide-eyed expression with something that can only be amusement.

“Wh- What are you doing here?”, Kageyama stutters out, trying to shake the boy off of him for some reason, but realizing after only a few failed attempts that he doesn’t really want the boy to move. He’s warm, like in the dreams, and through the thin layer of his sleeping shirt, Kageyama can feel a heartbeat echoing against his back. He’s not sure if that’s his own heart, or the other boy’s.

The boy grins at him. “You thought about me, didn’t you?”, he laughs, arms tightening the tiniest bit around Kageyama’s neck. “You thought about me a lot, so I can be here now.”

His voice is like honey and fire morphed together. Soft, tickling his skin with a feather-light touch, but also scorching hot, reminding him of its very real, very palpable presence. The boy was in his dreams for the longest time, but now he’s here, arms and legs wrapped around him in the bathroom at eight in the morning.

“Are you real?”, Kageyama asks. Perhaps he’s still sleeping, perhaps he’ll wake up in a short while and realize this was all just a dream, and he’ll be alone in a cold bed, face another cold day, and go to sleep feeling cold and waiting for the boy to make him feel warm again. Somewhere in his chest, Kageyama’s heart stings as if pierced at the mere thought of this being the case.

The boy tilts his head to the side, looking around the bathroom with curiously wide eyes. Once he’s surveyed everything there is to see, their gazes meet in the mirror again, still as warm as ever.

“I am. I’ve been real since the first moment you thought of me.”

“But that was just a thought…”

The boy looks confused for a second, but the warmth never leaves his embrace. “And does me being ‘just a thought’ make me less real? Do you not feel me now?”

“Well, yes, I do, but… You were only a dream. You were inside my head.”

“Of course I was inside your head, dummy!”, the boy laughs, “That’s why I can be here now!”

Kageyama shakes his head slowly, as if trying to shake the sense back into his mind. Like a snow globe, he’d shake it up real hard, and watch the bits of his sanity fall back into place once again. But the more he waits, the warmer the boy is, and the wider his smile gets, and the less everything makes sense to him.

“You’re real because I wanted you to be?”, he asks, uncertainly. At first the conclusion seems absurd, but the more he thinks about it, the more it seems to take shape, make sense somehow. In any other situation, he’d be sure of the opposite- things cannot come true just because we want them to, and things that aren’t real cannot become real merely to please our wishes. That’s not how the world works.

But the boy lets out another soft laugh. It sounds like the tinkling of a tiny bell, something otherworldly, too kind to be heard in this reality. But he hears it nonetheless, and it makes him feel like his legs have turned gelatinous, too weak to hold the both of them up even though the boy weighs next to nothing. He walks back to the bedroom and sits down on the bed, letting the boy clamber off of him but immediately missing the warmth of them pressed together.

When they face each other on the bed, Kageyama immediately takes in what he couldn’t see in their reflection in the mirror- the boy is small, much smaller than Kageyama himself, though they look to be about the same age. He’s wearing a yellow shirt with a cartoon version of the planet Saturn on it, the orb pink and its ring a baby blue, and pale green shorts. Somehow, even those soft colours make Kageyama feel at ease, though he really would prefer the boy being wrapped around him still. His skin is tanned, covered in tiny freckles… _Angel kisses_ , his mind supplies. The sunshine boy covered in a thousand angel kisses, wearing pastel coloured clothes and looking at him like he hung the stars himself.

“You’ve been cold for an awfully long time, haven’t you?”, the boy asks him softly, reaching out and laying one tiny, warm hand on the bare skin of Kageyama’s knee. Goosebumps raise on his skin even though he feels immediately warmer where they touch. “I can see it in your eyes.”

Kageyama frowns. “You can see what?”

The hand rubs small, soothing circles on his skin as the boy inches just the tiniest bit closer, smelling of sun-kissed grass and the breeze above seawater. He stares into Kageyama’s eyes as if he’s reading something in them, intense and unblinking, but somehow still calming.

“The cold would have gotten you if you didn’t want me.”

Somehow, Kageyama knows this is true. On more than one occasion he’d felt a deeply-rooted cold numb his heart when he’d had trouble falling asleep, because it’s only in those desperate, sleep-deprived moments that one is truly at their most vulnerable. He’d toss and turn and put on sweaters over t-shirts, sweatshirts over sweaters, two pairs of socks, but to no avail. The cold wasn’t there because his heating was broken. It was there because he was broken, somewhere, and didn’t know how to fix himself.

“You don’t have to do it all on your own, dummy.”, the boy mumbles, his lower lip jutting out a bit as his other hand raises to pet the top of Kageyama’s head.

His small fingers scratch through the dark, silky strands of Kageyama’s hair, before he lets them rest on the back of his neck. An embarrassing sort of pleased sound threatens to escape through Kageyama’s mouth, so he clamps it shut and leans into the tiny touches, hoping that his movement isn’t completely obvious, though he suspects otherwise. No one has ever been this gentle with him. He never knew he needed it until this boy came around, and now he wonders how he’ll ever live without it again.

The boy smiles at him, but this time it’s not as wide as before. His eyes look the tiniest bit sad, like he’s seen the inside of Kageyama and felt the cold on his own skin for the first time ever.

 “Sometimes life makes warm people become cold.”, he whispers, “Sometimes people don’t realize they’re cold before it’s too late… once your heart freezes over, there’s no going back. You become as cold as ice, and no one’s warmth can make it melt.”

Kageyama blinks, eyes stinging. “But I _am_ cold. I’m sure my heart’s already frozen solid.”

“Hmm…”, the boy squints, though there is still a hint of the old amusement in his eyes. He clears his throat, as if getting ready to make some grand announcement, and moves a hand to Kageyama’s chest, right above where his heart is thudding a thundering rhythm against his ribcage. He smiles up at Kageyama, rubbing in tiny circles over that same spot, as if soothing a frightened animal. “No, Tobio. Your heart’s just got a bit of frostbite, but it’ll go away soon.”

The words make something settle in the pit of Kageyama’s stomach, and his heart finally manages to settle down for the first time since their eyes met in the mirror earlier. The hands on his neck and chest are warm, and though they’re very small, much smaller than his own, he can’t help but think that this boy is very big. He may be the biggest thing in Kageyama’s life.

“What’s your name?”, he asks.

The boy tilts his head to one side, looking like he’s trying to remember something that he’d been told a very, very long time ago, so long ago that he’s almost forgotten it completely. Then he perks up significantly, eyes alight with a new wave of warmth, and leans forward to press a peck of a kiss to the tip of Kageyama’s nose. The momentary confusion this causes is enough to make him laugh with newfound joy.

“Shouyou.”, he says with a smile, “My name is Shouyou.”

Once he’s recovered from the incapacitating moment of affection, which is less a moment and more a seemingly infinite stretch of time in which his mind empties of any and all thought, focusing in on one thing and one thing only, and that is- _This is a boy who is like the sun_ , on a loop, over and over again, he's flooded with new anxieties. This can’t be real, surely. It’s too strange, too good to be true, and any moment now he’s going to wake up and realize that his mind played a very complex, very cruel trick on him, and maybe then his heart really will freeze over. The mere thought of this sends a shiver down his spine.

The boy stiffens and a hand cups Kageyama’s cheek, which up to this moment he hadn’t realized had become wet with tears at some point, staring at him with worried eyes and a wobbly lip.

“Don’t you dare think like that, Tobio!”, he hiccups, and even as he cries the fire in his eyes doesn’t burn out, and he’s the most beautiful thing Kageyama has ever laid eyes on. It makes him feel dizzy. “I’m real! You’re not allowed to freeze, because I’m here and I’m gonna make you warm again, you hear me?”

Kageyama looks up at him, sniffling. “When I go to sleep tonight, will you still be there when I wake up?”

After a moment of silence, the other boy nods slowly but surely, wiping at Kageyama’s cheeks with his thumb and catching stray tears as he goes.

“And… And tomorrow, too? And what about the day after tomorrow? Or a month? Will you still be real?”

Shouyou hums, nodding again, and presses a kiss to his cheek where the tears he missed have already started to dry down, leaving salty trails in their wake. His lips are soft like flower petals, and his breath is warm when he exhales against Kageyama’s skin.

“Dreams don’t always come true, Tobio. Thoughts don’t always become real, either… More often than not, people live their whole lives wishing for things that might never happen.”, he whispers into Kageyama’s ear, petting his head again. They’re very close now, at some point Shouyou must have scooted all the way closer to him, or maybe he’s the one who moved, pulled in by the warmth of the other boy.

“Why me, then? Why did mine come true?”

Shouyou shrugs, pressing his face into Kageyama’s neck and staying there, breathing softly. “Because I listened? Because you needed me?”, he murmurs, pressing closer still, as if he wants to crawl into Kageyama’s chest, right up next to his heart. “Maybe because the cold didn’t get you yet.”

“So I thought of you, and you heard me thinking of you… And you felt that you could save me, so you became real and came here?”, a nod, weak as it is due to Shouyou’s face still being pressed into the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “And you’re staying, for good? You’re not gonna leave me?”

Shouoyou shifts once more, emerging from his spot against Kageyama’s skin, where he’s the very warmest, and looks into his eyes. A pleading sort of look meets his gaze, one that screams of pains so deeply rooted that it’d take ages, perhaps an entire lifetime, trying to make up for all that they’ve corrupted. He cups both of the other boy’s cheeks, his sun-kissed skin a contrast to the paleness of that beneath his fingers, and places the gentlest of kisses to Kageyama’s lips.

A tiny spark ignites within Kageyama at that moment, and his heart feels as if it were shaking off a thin layer of morning dew from its surface. He blinks for a few moments, trying to regain his sense of self in front of this beautiful, beautiful boy.

“I’m gonna be here every morning when you wake up, and every night when you fall asleep, and during all the in-betweens.”, Shouyou tells him.

Kageyama smiles, heart light and fluttery. “Okay... You’ll keep me warm, and I’ll do the same for you. Deal?”

“Deal.”, Shouyou giggles quietly, pressing another kiss to his mouth. It sounds like a promise, told in that same tinkle he used before, an angelic sort of sound that makes everything he says sound irrevocably true. 

_You’ll never know, dear_

_How much I love you_

_Please don’t take_

_My sunshine away_

**Author's Note:**

> so i read 'blind willow, sleeping woman' by haruki murakami yesterday. he had this short story titled 'a "poor aunt" story', wherein this guy's thought about a nonexistent "poor aunt" personifies into an actual poor aunt that lives on his back for a while. what i took away from it is that our thoughts, or our words, can sometimes be so strong that they actually become tangible. i personally felt that this "poor aunt" was a metaphor for depression, as the guy begins losing all of his friends because all of them see their own memories, or thoughts (mainly negative or confusing) instead of the aunt, and therefore begin to associate the man with those feelings of sadness or confusion and choose to cut ties with him.  
> i have this fear, you see, that by talking to those closest to me about my inner cold, i will inevitably make them begin to associate me with the same feelings i'm trying to talk to them about. like, if i talk to someone about my depression, i will in turn become the personification of that depression for that person, and they'll only see me as that. it's quite an odd feeling, but i felt the need to share this little story with you, if you're still reading this, that is.  
> however, i also believe that this cold is not so deeply rooted that we can't melt it at some point. i guess this is my way of trying to say "it gets better", whether it be for my own peace of mind or for someone else who needs to hear this. 
> 
> comments/kudos are appreciated btw! thanks for reading <3


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